


A Dream To Be Innocent

by gala_apples



Series: An Alphabet of Teen Wolf Crossovers [8]
Category: Inception (2010), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Nogitsune Trauma, Other: See Story Notes, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-18
Updated: 2014-06-18
Packaged: 2018-02-05 05:57:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1807900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the nogitsune Stiles wants to militarize his mind. After the Fischer job, Saito only cleared Cobb’s record. Arthur’s looking for some low-risk jobs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dream To Be Innocent

**Author's Note:**

> The sex between Stiles and Arthur is mildly dub-con, because Stiles is using a fake ID and hasn't told Arthur he's under the age of consent in California.

It’s only a few weeks after Allison and Aiden’s deaths that Stiles figures out the solution to his problems. Or at least step one. 

His dad, Scott, Scott’s mom, Deaton; pretty much everyone with half a say in his life think he should get counselling with Morell. That, or figure out a way of excising the supernatural out of the last year of his life and just talk about the other stuff. Neither are options Stiles is going to pursue. There’s no way he can trust Morell, not when she’s never shown any regret for being Deucalion’s emissary. Nor can Stiles act like his life is merely tragic, not haunted. That’s only going to give him a raging case of cognitive dissonance, and he refuses to make himself crazier. Stiles would rather continue suffering, would rather not eat and not sleep and walk a constant thin edge of self destruction, than feel any crazier.

But then it hits him. Yes he has every right to be scared now. Of course he does. His mind was not his own. He contributed to the deaths of others, would have to be charged as an accessory if there were any way to bring the supernatural to court. But if he trains his brain, it’ll eventually be strong enough to not allow a next time. 

Stiles starts with lucid dreaming. He spirals wider and deeper from there, until he’s in what the avid CSI watcher would call the darknet. There’s a forum, for dreamscape artists and criminals. Reading the threads and scrolling through the far more innocent Wikipedia article on the topic shows it’s exactly what Stiles wants. No. Needs. If he’s going to be himself again one day, he needs this.

There are a dozen reasons to not post, including but not limited to utterly shaming his dad if there’s an undercover cop on the site and he gets arrested. It would be worse than the Jackson-in-the-paddy-wagon event, far worse. Unlawful imprisonment didn’t even get him a fine or mandatory volunteering, but extracting is a felony. And still Stiles types into the compose message box, mentally crossed fingers his only protection from consequences. He _needs_ to.

**I’m an 18 year old male in northern California. I’m offering my mind as a place for an extractor to practice. No job, only the opportunity to hone your craft with someone’s consent. Contact me privately to start hashing out details.**

Many of the messages Stiles deletes immediately upon reading. He’s not meeting with anyone who requests he not tell anyone where he’s going. There’s no explanation for creepiness of that level that would be enough to still Stiles’ flailing hands. A few are worth following up with though. He’s not about to drop his name or specific location, but he’s willing enough to answer one person’s question of what they might look for in a dreamshare, or another who is wondering why he’s offering.

**I’ve recently had someone in my head, and I’m looking to make my mind stronger.**

This time the response takes longer. Maybe it’s a watched-kettle-doesn’t-boil thing. Maybe Stile should be doing something more than sitting in his swivel chair with his legs pulled up and under him, refreshing the page again and again. But really, what’s he going to do? Go bike riding with Scott, making sure to pedal either ahead or behind so he can’t see his still stricken face? Hang out watching Agents of SHIELD with Kira like he didn’t tell Barrow to kidnap her?

**It’s called militarization. It should be an easy lesson. I can help, for a fee.**

Stiles frowns at the screen. What the hell? He types a reply much to that effect. He’s just about to send the message when a cooler head prevails. A7 seems like the least sketchy person with actual interest in meeting him. If he sends off a verbal flaying, the individual will hardly contact him again. Stiles deletes the message and types out a second with significantly less cursing. Then, to be safe, he plays a game of Collapse in another tab. He makes it to level thirteen before the boxes appear too quickly to delete in time. Only when he’s finished does he go back to the private message screen to reread it. It’s still clearly irritated, but nothing he thinks he’ll regret sending.

The response is back before dinner time. **I’m well aware that your initial post said nothing about payment. However you seem to be of the belief that you would be helping me, when in truth I’d be helping you. I don’t need practice. It’s not something you forget. It is, though, something you cannot teach yourself.**

Well, shit. A7’s got him there. **So what do you want? Sack full of nickels?**

**Given that you are a college student with presumably limited access to funds, I will make do with a thousand. And before you attempt to quibble, I suggest you inquire elsewhere as to how much the average job costs. I can guarantee you the number has many more zeros. I’ve taken the liberty of adding a link to an anonymous deposit website, feel free to hack it thoroughly before entrusting that I won’t steal all your money.**

Given that he’s a high school junior, a thousand dollars is basically his gas budget for a year. He’ll have to accidentally crash his Jeep and claim PTSD afterwards or something, to explain why he’s not using it. Otherwise his dad will put on his Sheriff’s hat and leak suspicions all over him.

**What do you need to do this?**

**Very little. A place where we can lounge. A place that will be absolutely uninterrupted for at least half an hour. I suspect you are lying about your location. I am not when I say I will meet you anywhere in California, from San Diego to Eureka, but nowhere else.**

It’s fairly obvious Stiles can’t do it at home. Never let criminals know where you live, especially when part of the criminal’s repertoire is knock-out drugs. Not to mention that what little is left of the Pack has been checking up on him at random. Mountain ash might save him from Scott or Cora, but he’s not sure about Malia, and it does nothing for Kira. But the next county over should be safe. No one will expect him to leave Beacon Hills. Even Derek couldn’t stay away.

**Unless you tell me otherwise in your next message, I’m getting a hotel in Brandolf.**

**Message me again when you know date and room number.**

Technically Stiles can’t book a room because he’s not eighteen. Luckily, you can do a lot of things with an older friend’s swiped credit card and a fake ID. 

Two days later he’s bouncing on the edge of a queen mattress, broken springs really taking him low before he stabilizes into a sitting position. He’s already sent a message to Scott saying if _I don’t text you in a hour I’m probably dead in a hotel bathtub in Brandolf_. There’s no doubt in Stiles’ mind that Scott is already on his way in his mom’s borrowed car, but it’ll take at least thirty minutes for him to get to the county, and then there are two hotels for him to sniff out. Scott won’t find him before the man’s requested time period ends. And if A7 needed that time for hacking Stiles to bits instead of dreamsharing? Well...he’ll be dead. Whatever. It’s hard to not be a little cavalier with your life expectancy when you’ve watched your body set traps that nearly kill your coach.

The knock at the door comes at a downswing on his bouncing. Stiles leaps up, practically launching himself from the bed. The man on the other side of the door is hot, in a classy, handsome sort of way. He’s wearing a suit for a criminal adventure that revolves around sleeping, for godsake. Stiles is wearing an Ironman graphic tee with a red plaid shirt to match, and black sweats; good laying in bed clothes.

“You’re the one who wanted to militarize your mind?” the man questions, voice sharp with disbelief.

“Not you convince you of my immaturity by quoting Maury Povich, but you don’t know me, you don’t know where I’ve been. Some heavy shit has happened, crazy heavy, and I can’t let people fuck with my head anymore.” Given the choice between his father finding his body, and being possessed a second time, Stiles would pick the former. He’s never been so hypothetically selfish before, but he doesn’t plan on changing his mind.

“Fair enough.” He comes in as Stiles backs up to let him, socked toes pinching at the hotel’s matted carpet. “Arthur.”

“Derek,” Stiles replies, because he never actually _did_ get Danny to check that the suggested website made things completely anonymous, and just in case it didn’t, that’s the name on the credit card.

Arthur puts his kit on the bed nearest the door. Fine with Stiles. If Scott breaks in early it’ll probably be through the window. “I presume you’ve done your research?”

Stiles nods. As much as he could, at least. He still thinks ‘darknet’ is a stupid name, but it’s true that some of it is sketchy as fuck. There were a few links he couldn’t bring himself to open, no matter how much of an education they promised to provide.

“So I’m not going to waste time explaining how the PASIV works, or time dilation.”

Fine with him. Stiles falls back on the bed and takes one arm out of his button up. “Hit me up,” he replies, patting the crook of his arm where the needle will probably go. It better not bruise. Dad will think he’s doing heroin to cope and will lose his fucking mind.

“It’s hard to plant a needle when you’re moving like that.” Arthur snaps, bent over him. His skills in looming aren’t as top notch as the Hales, but Stiles can still feel his presence when he closes his eyes.

Stiles can’t help flexing his fist. He knows from Scott’s mom that he’s better off if his veins bulge, it makes it easier to place the needle. He and Scott have both been getting parental permission to donate blood since the day they turned sixteen. But given the way his hand is reflexively lifting off the bed with each squeeze, he’s probably doing it too hard. 

“Sorry.” It’s polite to apologise, and he wouldn’t want to piss off the oddly mannered criminal. A possibly ex-military criminal, since the origin of the PASIV machine is from the military, and it’s extremely hard to get one without stealing from inside the system.

“Apologising without stopping the behaviour is pointless,” Arthur says acidically a moment later.

Shit. Yes, he is still moving. Without consciously doing so, Stiles is rocking his hips from side to side so his thighs chafe against each other. They only stops when he tells himself firmly to, and he can’t guarantee that he’s not clenching his toes or something to make up for it.

“I’m sorry,” he offers again. “I have ADHD and I didn’t know if the PASIV drugs contraindicated adderall. There’s not exactly a wealth of information about it. It’s not even on Erowid. So I just didn’t take any yesterday or today. Turns out I kind of need it.”

Instead of a sarcastic _obviously_ , or something along those lines, Arthur says “that was smart.” Then he sits on the edge of the bed and pins Stiles’ wrist with his left hand and plunges the needle in with his right.

Stiles takes another sip of his Starbucks, then quickly pulls the cup down to his hip. He’s not sure how stealthy he’s actually being -it’s still a brown and white cup against acid-wash denim- but hopefully the librarian doesn’t notice. He’s got diametrically opposed goals of finishing his coffee before it gets cold, and finding the books he needs, and would hate to pick one over the other. 

A few steps down the aisle Arthur joins him. “Stiles, do you remember how you got here?”

“Jeep?” Stiles questions back, drawing out the vowels. It’s not like the kanima last year, the Oni didn’t wreck his car. So unless his dad bands together with Ms McCall and Derek to declare he’s too unstable to drive himself, he’ll continue to get places in his beautiful baby blue car.

“No. Do you remember anything specific?”

Stiles’ eyes dart aimlessly around as he thinks. “No?” It’s unsettling, not being able to remember what he radio station he sang along to.

Arthur nods, like he expected as much. “It’s always your first step. It’s true that people’s minds go on autopilot when doing a boring task, like routine travel, but if it’s real and it’s important to remember, you should be able to recall it. There’s no point A to point B in a dream.”

Oh shit, this is a dreamshare? There are significantly less hot naked people than Stiles usually has in his dreams, pardon him for not realising it immediately. Well, naked people or torrents of blood. Stiles nods at Arthur as he takes in what the man’s actually said. It makes sense. He and Allison and Scott went from ice baths at Deaton’s to white room, no in between. 

Arthur continues to walk and Stiles is left to follow. It’s not a bad position to be in. Arthur’s ass is kind of great. Maybe his subconscious will add in impeccably dressed, well shaped people to his next non-horrific dream. Not that he expects to have one of those for a while. There’s a reason he hasn’t been sleeping.

“Secondly, there’s your totem.”

“Uh, okay?” Literally all Stiles can think of are those tall wooden poles at summer camps.

“Your totem is a small object you can carry around with you at all times, real life and dream. It’ll react differently in the dream than in real life. A friend of mine uses a spinning top. It doesn’t fall in the dreamworld. Another uses a hair tie on the wrist that doesn’t stop stretching. I myself use a weighted dice. You never let another person touch it, in case they alter it.”

“Right. I’ll get on that.” He obviously can’t make it here, not if it has to travel into the real world too. But wouldn’t that be cool if you could pluck things out of dreams? Until someone brought a man eating, skyscraper tall robot out. People are why Stiles can’t have nice things.

“A last major point; you’ll be able to alter the normally unalterable. Think something different about these shelves.”

Stiles closes his eyes for only a moment before an idea comes to him. With the slightest bit of concentration -equally hard in a dreamscape, as it turns out- he’s able to turn all of the thick sober coloured leatherbound tomes into illustrated children’s books.

“Bet you thought I was gonna make the shelves taller.”

“It is the natural choice,” Arthur agrees.

“I guess I’m not like those other girls,” Stiles says cattily, then cackles.

Arthur ignores the comment. “You can destroy or alter whatever you want in a dreamscape. Just be aware that the more unnatural you make anothers, the quicker their projections will be aware of it.”

“Projections?”

“We are the only people in this dream.” 

They’ve gotten past the stacks, they’re in the study area, all wood tables and those classic green lampshaded lights. Stiles can’t help himself. He has a short burst of concentration and all the lights are gone, replaced with dangling kegger party tiki lights. Stiles snickers and all the occupants stare at him. And they don’t _stop_ staring.

“Projections are the part of you, the part of your dream that notices when something is wrong.”

The students are beginning to stand up now. They’re all still staring at him.

“They tend to not like it when someone’s in their head, changing things.”

They start walking towards him, and Stiles isn’t stupid. He runs. He’s pissed the library projections off, but maybe random sidewalk projections won’t be mad. He hasn’t do anything to them. He’s just gotta make it outside.

But there’s no way out. The stacks are more like a maze, connected in ways Stiles doesn’t remember them being before. He could figure a way out if he had time, he’s sure of it. Between the amount of time he’s spent in the Beacon Hills woods, the number of hours he’s logged playing search mission video games, and a formative experience being accidentally abandoned in a grocery store when he was four, Stiles has an impressively good inner compass. Except he doesn’t have time to stand and think about it logically. Not even a second. The projections are charging him, and frankly Stiles has a bad history with furious rampaging things.

The first one that reaches him tries to run through him. Stiles switches tactics at that moment, he turns to face the crowd and braces his feet. His stance buys him a second or two, and then the projections swarm, and he goes down. There are feet everywhere; on, his wrists, ankles, rib cage. Throat. Face. They make his skin ache and burn, as hot and deadly as being covered with a blanket of lava.

Stiles wakes up with a bolt. He’s panting, halfway on his way to an anxiety attack. There’s a sharp tug on his arm as his movement rips out the needle -no tape, Melissa would be pissed at the faulty technique- but he ignores it in favour of shouting at Arthur. Anger might stave off terror. “You didn’t say they’d try to kill me!”

“They always kill you. Us. I told you, that’s what the projections are for.”

“Oh god. God.” Stiles rubs at his forehead with the hand that’s not protectively covering his heart. Being trampled to death is definitely going to go in the nightmare queue. Maybe his brain will make it extra fun, even. Maybe he’ll get crushed under the Argent’s feet, a broken and bloody revenge for what his weak mind has caused.

“With extraction it’s about killing time. Side-tracking the dreamer, not being noticed or caught until we’ve got what we came in for. For you it’ll be about speed. How fast can you or your projections find the intruders, or how quickly can you hide what you believe they’re in you for in a way that they can’t get. You noticed how the stacks became complicated?”

“Uh, yeah!”

Arthur doesn’t acknowledge the fact that he just asked the stupidest question ever, just continues Dreamshare 101. “Mazes and paradoxes are your friend and mine both. We use them to distract and buy time. They’re an offensive tool. You, however, can use them for defense. We’re going to enter your dream next. You don’t have to tell me everything about your real life, Derek, but if I am acting as extractor tell me what I shall be looking for.”

Stiles thinks for a moment. The first two things that come to mind for _someone else cares enough to pay to get these secrets_ are that werewolves are real, and anything his father might have told him about a case. He’s not about to compromise either on his first attempt at hiding himself.

“Your job is to figure out who your forger should roleplay as. Find out who I’d give anything to sleep with. I’ll turn the information into an object.”

“Okay. I’ll search and you hide, using the tricks I’ve told you.”

Stiles isn’t sure many tricks Arthur has actually taught him, besides mazes let you kill people easier. But maybe it’s the sort of thing you can figure out on the go, as soon as you learn your parameters. And it’s not like he doesn’t have experience being shoved into the deep end of the pool. Hell, he’s actually had that legit, non-metaphorical experience.

“You should get a totem now. You can leave, if need be. I believe there’s a strip mall a few blocks away.”

He _could_ leave, but he doesn’t think he needs to. Again, as has become basically the new norm, Stiles’ mind is caught in the awful ordeal with the nogitsune. There are hints in there, dark ugly swathes of them, that show Stiles what his dreamscape might be like without an architect to create something cleaner. Mind made up, he stretches and rolls on the bed until he can reach the nightstand. Stiles pulls the thin Yellow Pages from the lone drawer and tears out a random page. He folds it, several times. Let Arthur think the chance inherent in the cootie catcher design has something to do with it, the way his own loaded dice work. Stiles knows the truth; it’s about being able to read the advertisements and numbers. Or not. That’s how he knew, before. The odd number of fingers had something to do with it, of course, but primarily it was losing the ability to read.

Task completed, Stiles falls back on the bed. Arthur puts the needle in the same arm, only lower, a few inches below the previous site. It’s only beginning to scab. It’s definitely going to bruise. He’s going to have to wear long sleeves for a week, damn it.

Stiles has been in these woods a million times. He knows them. Not just because whatever happens with werewolves inevitably declines to shit going down amongst the trees and wildlife, though that’s obviously true. He was a woods dweller before Laura Hale was dumped for anyone to find. In fact, that one was one of the reasons Stiles made Scott come out with him; he had to see what some murderer had done to his woods. Because they _are_ his. He’s been in them a million times. Stiles has been on some version of a track team since junior high, and open terrain cross country through the forest seems to be every coach’s favourite. The first time Stiles took his dad’s whiskey to try it instead of dump it down the sink he headed outdoors. You can’t drunk drive in the woods, making it the best place to get blasted. Not to mention he and Scott both know you can’t hear parents shouting from the woods. These woods feel safe to his heart, even if they’re not technically safe for his body. It’s why he’s not surprised when he pulls the cootie catcher out of his pocket and the words are gibberish. Of course he chose here.

He could stay in the woods. He could hide a picture, Arthur’s answer, in the crook of a branch, and work on making the trees wider and taller, turn it all into a hedge maze. But deeper in the woods is the Hale house. Probably a lot closer here than it is in real life. It’s his dream, so the projections can’t get pissed if he folds the space a bit to make it near.

Stiles is proud of his ADHD in the next twenty minutes. Without his adderall he can’t focus on anything for a long period of time, but he doesn’t need focus. He needs quick craftiness to come up with as many ideas as he can. It’s the beautiful thing about the dreamscape, it seems to pick up on whims like commands. 

His preparations fall into two basic categories. There’s what he can do to confuse invaders, and what he can do to menace them. He’s not quite sure setting traps along the house ala Home Alone is what Arthur had in mind, but it’s what he’s got until the dapper man grades him and suggests refinements. And he’s not ashamed of the inspiration. He might be too young for the movies, technically speaking. By the time he was old enough to not cry at the pigeon lady Macaulay wasn’t a child actor but a lunatic. But if Scott and Melissa can watch Weird Science at least a few times a year, Stiles can watch the duology with his dad every Christmas. 

There’s a brief moment of nasty flashback when he decides to set down some bear traps, in lieu of broken glass ornaments. He cranks one open against the splintered wood floor and thinks of Lydia, leg about to be ruined, and being unable to read the disarming instructions because he was unwittingly in the shadow of the nogitsune. He can’t read now either, but at least he knows why. Stiles can’t read because he’s making his mind a thorny, brutal place to come into, rusty hinged metal and all. He closes his eyes and when he opens them the entire floor is covered, a garden of bone crunching edges.

Anything he doesn’t alter for straight up bobby trapping he gets from Escher. Why not make the holes in the floor like tessellations? Why not make supporting columns not hold up what they’re supposed to, like Belvedere? Why not make stairs like Ascending And Descending? Why not have doors everywhere they can’t be, like Gravitation? Why shouldn’t everything in this ash house be impossible?

Stiles can tell when Arthur reaches the house. He’s not sure how, he doesn’t actually see him, but part of him can just tell. That’s when he starts paying his third homage. Stiles might not be a coding geek, or a circuitry geek, but he is a research geek, and one week he spent every free hour playing recreations of 1980’s computer games. All day and night, Zork and Metroid and Tetris. Now that Arthur’s in the front hallway it’s time to play Snake. If the extractor wants to actually enter a room, he better be prepared to not cross his own path.

This time he wakes calmly, a sensation much like falling hitting him as he paces what might have been Cora’s bedroom before he opens his eyes on a water stained ceiling. Arthur is examining him from the second bed, legs spread wide. He’s not doing anything half as obvious as dismantling and rebuilding the gun Stiles is sure he has on him, but the air is still filled with tension. It doesn’t bother Stiles particularly. It’s almost comforting, in a way. He’s gotten used to being surrounded by threat, from strangers and friends alike. 

“How’d it go?” He prompts the man, pulling himself into a sitting position. If there are coming down issues from the PASIV drugs he hasn’t hit them yet.

“Werewolves.”

“Uh?” Mother of god. Did Arthur extract the wrong thing? If Stiles has fucked over the last of his friends by letting a powerful criminal learn what he shouldn’t know -- if he’s caused more damage by letting someone else into his mind-- 

“I’ve never seen someone’s projections be monstrous before. Not even the most despicable of society have monsters for their projections.”

Arthur doesn’t know. Whatever happened in the dreamshare that Stiles didn’t see, it wasn’t Arthur finding the wrong physical manifestation of a secret. Stiles can’t remember the last time a wave of relief hit him this hard. He’s practically drowning in it. Maybe when Dad and Melissa and Chris were found under the nemeton? 

Stiles shrugs. He can’t exactly say the real reason his mind would pick werewolves to defend him. “Maybe they don’t acknowledge themselves as monsters. I know I’ve got dark places. So did you find it? Before your throat was ripped out?” Because if Arthur died in his dream, that’s definitely how his wolf projections accomplished it. 

“No.” Arthur shakes his head. 

“Hah!” Stiles blurts out before he can stop himself. He blames it on the lack of medication in his system, never mind that he’d probably be equally obnoxious towards obviously dangerous people while the normal cocktail of chemicals swam in his blood.

Arthur adjusts on the edge of the bed as his expression settles into what Stiles thinks of as Debrief Face. He’s seen it dozens of times before, between Coach Finstock and Derek and hanging out at his dad’s office when he was young and his latest babysitter had quit out of frustration. At least half the time he doesn’t care about what’s said, but Stiles paid a thousand dollars to hear this debrief. If anything, he should be taking notes. Hiring a stenographer, possibly.

“I know I was right about the room. It took me an age to get there thanks to your paradoxical stairs, well done. I myself often employ Penrose stairs. But before I could as much as step in, the projections stormed. You did a remarkably good job, creating. You’re not at architect levels, of course, but still. The landscape was realistic, if not the projections.”

“I didn’t really create it. Most of that was the Hale house. I-”

Stiles can practically hear the compliment being rescinded. Arthur crosses his arms, muscles bulging slightly against the rolled cotton cuffs. “You should never use real places for your dreamscape. That’s how you lose track of reality.”

Stiles hums non-committally. No sense in closing the barn door if the horses are out. Besides, it worked. He knows how to make it defensible. “Since I won, you want me to just tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“Your answer is Derek Hale.”

Arthur frowns. “You also shouldn’t create aliases based on people you already know.”

Stiles hums even more non-committally. There’s no way he’s destroying his fake ID. It wasn’t quite as pricey as this event is, but it was still enough that he balks at the idea. Especially since he has no other over twenty one acquaintances who wouldn’t notice their credit card going missing, or care that bank statements show cash being deposited exactly equal to random purchase expenditures.

“You obviously know the man well, if you can recreate his home. Would it really be so bad if you told him?”

“Yes,” Stiles replies instantly. He can’t think of a worse interaction he could have with Derek. The guy already knows. He has to know, since Isaac, Aiden, Ethan, Peter and Cora have all teased him about the way his body reacts around Derek. Scott hasn’t only because of bro-manners, not because he hasn’t noticed the exact same things. Derek knows, and he hasn’t taken control of the situation with his particular brand of wordless aggression. If Stiles hasn’t been shoved against a wall and kissed by now, it’s not going to happen, and asking Derek why not would just make a crappy situation worse.

“If I may, he doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

Stiles’ mind spins. If this trend continues, he’s only ever going to have sex when a dominant personality is trying to show him an illegal way out of his troubles. He’s oddly okay with that. It’s not like he’s not in trouble often.

“If you want this, you need to take off at least two articles of clothing.” Stiles doesn’t think he’s driving a hard bargain. He highly doubts Arthur will want to get his suit pants come stained anyway.

“And you have to strip completely. I can’t fuck you senseless looking at Tony Stark.”

When Stiles tells this story in the future -and that’s a _when_ , not an _if_ , he knows he’ll be as proud of Arthur as he was with Malia- he’ll probably give himself a good line about Tony Stark being everyone’s type. It’ll make Scott laugh, and Kira will agree. In the present though, Stiles has no quip. What he’s got is something close to rugburn from the speed in which he pulls off his clothes.

Stiles isn’t expecting his first time with a guy to go perfectly. Neither of them were expecting to fuck, especially not another man, at least in Stiles’ case. He’s not sure where Arthur falls on the Kinsey Scale, and it would be wrong to assume hella-gay just because he’s dapper. Stiles has a replacement condom in his wallet, and that’s it for supplies. He also has only a theoretical knowledge of gay sex, and it’s not always easy to put theory into hands on practice. Re; that time with the mortar and pestle. The inexperience doesn’t really matter to him though. Losing his virginity in the basement of an insane asylum set the bar fairly low. He’s not being pressed against upholstery from the 70’s, it’s already a step up.

Arthur works him open with fingers and spit. It seems like enough right up until the moment Arthur starts penetrating him, then it’s a little lacking. Still, he has impeccable manners. He asks if Stiles wants to stop -that’s a no, obviously- and waits until he’s got the right angle before picking up the pace. At that point Stiles is happy to be pounded, because hello prostate, where have you been all my life?

The afterglow is better too. There’s no mentally ill teenager tazering him into unconsciousness and then restraining him to make it easier to drill into his brain, for one thing. It’s sort of pathetic that that’s a thing you have to be wary of in Beacon Hills. Stiles has to laugh, because he really can’t cry any more.

“What?”

Well, shit. Apparently that chuckle was out loud. It’s not the first time he’s said something he didn’t mean to. It’s not even the thousandth time. Whatever, he can cover this. It’s not like he doesn’t have a million thoughts in his head.

“I’m not saying I wasn’t aware I like guys older than me. I just didn’t figure it’d be your type of guy.” After a sideways glance of Arthur’s expression Stiles hastens to add, “and by that I mean that you’d be interested in me. You were wearing cufflinks earlier, I saw them. I’m kind of a schlub.”

Arthur shakes his head. “Don’t judge a book by it’s suit. Always go for the man or woman you want. As it happens I have a kink for people confident enough to pull off hideous attire.”

Stiles rolls onto his side to look at the man completely, ADHD officially killing his loose limbed afterglow. Maybe the third time he has sex he’ll be properly medicated, and his bedmate won’t have a sudden theory about secrets buried in walls. Maybe the third time he’ll actually be able to spoon the person, and touch their skin as their sweat dries. It’s a big dream, a crazy amount of optimism. But if he can get his mind locked down, maybe he’ll be able to afford optimism again.

“Am I sensing a story here? A regular at the bar story? A family friend story? A work story?”

Arthur sits up abruptly. “Did you pay me a thousand dollars to tell you about my affairs, or did you pay me to help militarize your mind?”

Yeah, okay. Arthur’s unrequited love nerve is clearly more sensitive than Stiles’ is. He undoubtedly doesn’t have a group of friends who can smell arousal and comment on it or the rejection of it at their leisure. Stiles hit Arthur’s, and now the conversation is done. That’s fine, he can roll with a change of topic.

“Shoot me up in the same arm. That way I only have to fake an injury to one limb.” He’ll just get one of the human members of the lacrosse team to practice at lunch with him, and carefully position his body so that he gets a ball in the arm. Problem solved.

Except, new problem created, evidently, because Arthur suddenly looks irate. “I place my needles-”

Stiles scrambles to his knees and waves his hands emphatically. “Hold up, don’t get all offended. I’m not besmirching your mad skillz, man. My dad’s a sher- a cop. He notices things like track marks. You could be the best nurse in the world and he’d still see the punctures.”

“For the record, that’s something you tell a business partner before you hire them,” Arthur informs him dryly, uncoiling one of the IV lines.

“Complaining later, stabby stabby now,” Stiles replies. It’s important to get on this now; he has no idea how long a thousand dollars pays for Arthur’s attentions. Prior to their meeting he had assumed as long as it took for the lessons to stick, but that no longer seems likely. Arthur is the sort of man with a clock in his brain. He can probably calculate the exactly time left in a dream to the millisecond to actual second ratio. No doubt he came to Brandolf with a schedule in mind. 

“I also recommend against telling known criminals to stab you.”

“Oh hush. You know what I mean. Let’s do this, dreamshare three point oh. We’ve only got so much time.” Stiles just has to hope he doesn’t run over. For the sake of his education, and for the sake of Scott’s hide. Scott’s definitely in Brandolf by now, and if the guy bursts into the room with the intention of saving his best friend’s life, it is a one hundred percent certainty he’s getting shot. Arthur has at least one gun on his person, and he works in a field where split seconds count even more than they do for his dad or Chris, who are no slouches in their marksmanship. 

Stiles can practically see the whole thing already. Scott will run in and rip the IV out of his arm, immediately throwing them both from the dreamscape. Arthur will take three seconds to realise what’s gone wrong. He’ll draw, aim, and fire before Scott even sees the gun. It won’t be deadly, there’s not a chance Arthur’s got wolfsbane bullets, but it’ll still hurt, and Stiles will have to figure out a way of explaining why Scott’s not reacting to being shot. It’ll be a bad scene all around. Everyone will be better off if Stiles can just get this now. Arthur will be, Scott will be. Everyone that won’t eventually die because Stiles is weak will be. He just has to perfect this one skill. How hard can it be to perfect one skill?


End file.
